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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/26893810">A Night at the Museum</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/Phandancee74/pseuds/Phandancee74'>Phandancee74</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>The Originals (TV), The Vampire Diaries (TV)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>F/M, Hope gets erased from memory, Kol likes movies, Night at the Museum! AU, They give him ideas</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-10-08</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-10-08</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-06 22:07:59</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>5,437</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/26893810</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/Phandancee74/pseuds/Phandancee74</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Caroline asks Rebekah for a list of museums that have Klaus' artwork so she can take Hope to see them, then suddenly Hope doesn't exist anymore and Caroline still has this list? It isn't in her nature to leave a list uncompleted so she starts going visiting and finds one museum that is much more lively than expected.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Caroline Forbes/Klaus Mikaelson, Davina Claire/Kol Mikaelson</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>5</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>77</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>A Night at the Museum</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Caroline wanted to make sure that Hope didn’t only learn negative things about her father once he passed, so she asked Rebekah for a list of museums that had Klaus’ artwork in their collection. Rebekah liked the idea and offered to take her niece herself, but Caroline argued that it had to be someone outside the family, to prove that Klaus had been important to people beyond his siblings. Rebekah sent along a list within the hour, and included pointed notes about what else should be done in the area around each museum for fun, suggesting Caroline couldn’t provide entertainment on her own. </p>
<p>Caroline had huffed at that but let it go, she and Rebekah were still in their frenemy phase, though she secretly thought another century or two and they would be besties. </p>
<p>Caroline had originally intended to take Hope on a museum tour over the summer while she searched for information on how to stop the merge for her girls, but by the time summer rolled around, Hope had vanished from the memories of everyone on earth. <br/>____________________________________________________________________________</p>
<p>One day, as she stood in line to get coffee at yet another airport, deleting old messages and waiting for her flight to be rescheduled, Caroline found an itinerary in her messages from Rebekah that she didn’t remember asking for. Instantly she realized the importance of the list, and saved it on her phone, after that day, whenever she traveled for work she would stop at one of the museums.</p>
<p>It was hard the first time she visited one of the museums, Caroline had always expected Klaus to show up if she ever went to see his work, she thought he would somehow know where she was going and meet her there, standing in front of a piece that he’d made at a crucial time in history and that he would tell her about what the world was like when he’d painted such beautiful scenes. As much as Caroline thought that she and Rebekah would someday become more friendly, she also thought that she and Klaus were inevitable; inevitably she was once again wrong about a man in her life.</p>
<p>What Caroline didn’t realize though, what Klaus hadn’t told her but she should have guessed, was that over the years Klaus had tried every style of painting. While she had seen a few of his landscapes and abstract art, most of his works were portraits and often they were of members of his family. After the second or third museum Caroline recognized the patterns of his paintbrush, and the subjects, and she no longer had to look for a mark or a name she knew he’d used. Now she could walk through and immediately see anything he’d done. Caroline jokingly thought of herself as the premiere expert in Klaus’ oeuvre, that is until she remembered he had been alive for a thousand years and had works in dozens of museums. So many theses must have been written about his paintings over time, though certainly none would understand the significance of the subjects or the power the artist had beyond the emotions he invoked with his brush.</p>
<p>It was at a museum in Norway where Caroline saw a painting of a young boy leaning against the frame of the piece as if it were the frame of a window, it was clear he wanted you to come over and talk to him. The boy's eyes were a little sad and everything about him suggested he lived a life full of hard work. Caroline took in the light blond hair, the age of the child, and realized, it must be Henrik. She remembered hearing that Henrik always wanted to talk to Klaus, always wanted a part of what his much older siblings were doing. Klaus must have remembered him like this, always watching, always interested, and through Klaus’ own guilt, a little sad. This was a painting she wanted to be able to shove under Alaric’s nose every time the subject of Klaus came up and he would say the world was better off without him. This little boy had always wanted Klaus around, and Caroline felt she could relate sometimes, she had always thought he would be around. Some days she couldn’t even remember why he wasn’t. Rebekah had never really explained it, she felt. As she tried to focus on remembering when she heard he was gone her mind went hazy and she decided it was okay to continue to block out that difficult moment. </p>
<p>It was hard to leave the painting of Henrik, but Caroline knew that there were other pieces by Klaus here, and she wanted to see them all before the museum closed for the day, she was only here on a layover anyway. Caroline never made special trips out to see the museums on her list, she couldn’t justify taking a break from her mission to save her girls just to look at paintings made by a man she may or may not have been keeping in her back pocket, a man she had been waiting for and who she always knew was waiting for her. Tearing her eyes away from a painting that expressed something like the regret she was feeling right now, Caroline moved on.</p>
<p>Steps away from Henrik she noticed a little blond girl, a few years older than Henrik, trudging through a stream with a wooden sword in her hand and her dress soaked. Rebekah. She was the most common subject of Klaus’ portraits, Caroline had noticed, likely because she was his most constant companion. Still, it was unusual for him to paint her so young, often she was in elegant dress surrounded by finery with just a few subtle hints to the Mikaelson’s darker nature sprinkled throughout. Caroline knew this museum was out of the way for many travelers and she realized Klaus was hiding his more sensitive works here. She wondered if he ever would have taken her to see them if he had lived, if he would have been this open with her. </p>
<p>Seeing Henrik and this softer but no less spirited Rebekah made Caroline miss Klaus in a way she rarely allowed herself to. She would have loved to come here with him, to be at the point in their whatever relationship where he would have shown her these pieces of himself.</p>
<p>“Ma’am we’re closing for the night.” A guard came up next to Caroline and waved in front of her to get her attention. “But we’ll be open again at 10 if you want to keep looking, I noticed you didn’t get out of this room.”</p>
<p>“Oh. I’m just here for the night.” Caroline replied wistfully. “I wish I could come back tomorrow, maybe my work will bring me this way again sometime.”</p>
<p>“Maybe. It would be a shame to miss the other works we have in our collection by this artist, the little boy is an intriguing piece but we have several more paintings by this gentleman in our modern classics gallery down the hall. Actually, most of the collection comes from this family, they were artists all the way back for generations. My favorite piece is by this gentleman’s grandson, a sculpture of three wolves.”</p>
<p>Caroline frowned, wondering why Klaus would have made a sculpture with three wolves. She had never heard of him being particularly close with any wolves, though she knew there was a pack that lived in New Orleans. “Can you show it to me, before I go? I’ll only look for a minute.” </p>
<p>The guard smiled. “Alright. It’s on the way to the gift shop anyway, and you can pass through there to get back to the lobby.”</p>
<p>“Thank you.” </p>
<p>The guard brought her quickly through two more galleries into a small round room with a beautiful skylight, directly underneath of which was a bronze sculpture, depicting three wolves climbing a small ridge. The first wolf was huge, at the top, he surveyed the room but kept his body angled in a way to protect the other two. The second wolf, slightly smaller, urged a third wolf pup upwards, and placed her body between the viewer and the pup. It was clearly a family unit, and the idea of it left Caroline stumped. Was Klaus supposed to be the baby wolf and he wished his parents had raised him as part of the werewolf community? Was Klaus the big bad wolf? That was much more in line with his usual theme, but then who were the other two wolves?</p>
<p>Caroline stared at the piece intently and was startled when the guard coughed. “Sorry, Ma’am. We really need to get you out the door. I hope you find your way back here, I see that you really connect with these pieces. Maybe you can look up their work elsewhere.”</p>
<p>Caroline waved him off. “I already have a list, thank you.”</p>
<p>“Okay.” The guard smiled gently. “Let’s head out then.”</p>
<p>“No.” Caroline was annoyed, she was going to have to use compulsion here, she hated doing that unnecessarily but this piece was pulling at her. It was a puzzle she needed to solve. While she wanted to spend time with Klaus’ paintings of Henrik and young Rebekah, she just couldn’t leave this statue alone. </p>
<p>“No? Ma’am I can’t let you stay in here we need to close the museum.” The guard was apologetic but firm and made a movement towards his waist for a walkie talkie.</p>
<p>“You have already checked this room.” Caroline told the guard. “You’ve already checked the whole institution. When you leave you will turn off any security that would record me and leave the keys and security code on a note by your desk so I can lock up. You will go home and have a relaxing night.”</p>
<p>The guard turned and left and Caroline made sure she could hear him following her instructions to the T before she looked back to the three wolves. She walked around the artwork, forward and back searching for any secret messages, not that Klaus usually left those but she was playing detective, clues were important and must be found! </p>
<p>After examining the piece from every angle in the room yielded nothing, Caroline went to find the label. The piece was made two years earlier. Why? Caroline didn’t really know much about what Klaus was up to two years ago, except she remembered sending flowers when Hayley died, which had taken a lot out of her to be the bigger person, but she knew Klaus, and apparently Hayley had become an ally to his family over the years. How had Hayley died? Some random vampire purism BS that had somehow involved one of her students. Caroline shook her head, it was strangely hard to remember two years earlier, something that had never been a problem before. Caroline pulled a notebook out of her purse and moved into an adjacent room with a bench to jot down all of the information she had so far. </p>
<p>“Three wolves, Hayley?, two years ago, memory drain, spell?” She muttered to herself as she wrote.</p>
<p>“No need to try so hard, my tasty little thing. All you have to do is ask.” A voice came from behind her. Caroline spun around at top speed but no one was there. She was about to vamp from room to room to see who else was in the museum with her when the voice interrupted her thoughts. “Don’t go running off. We’re right here, on the wall.”</p>
<p>Caroline looked across the row of portraits and her eyes stopped on a painting of Kol and his wife, Davina. The couple waved at her from their large painting and Caroline did a double take. </p>
<p>“What?! What is going on?”</p>
<p>“Just a bit of magic.” Kol teased.</p>
<p>“Obviously.” Caroline replied, moving to stand in front of Kol with her arms crossed. “You are a painting, and you are talking. I didn’t do any hallucinogenic drugs today so I’m pretty sure you are real.”</p>
<p>“As real as fifteen layers of oil and some nice birch wood can be.” </p>
<p>“And a spell carefully crafted to recreate the effects of the movie Night at the Museum.” Davina finished.</p>
<p>“I thought this was a Harry Potter thing.” Caroline said, gesturing at the moving portrait figures.</p>
<p>“I mean, sure, it could be that but Kol definitely thought of it after I showed him Night at the Museum.” </p>
<p>“So everything in here comes alive at night?” Caroline asked, thinking about the wolf statues and wondering if they were about to chomp down on her. They were definitely meant to be werewolves, could she get werewolf bite poisoning from bronze? Klaus wasn’t around to heal her anymore, and this would definitely be the weirdest way to go.</p>
<p>“Yes, though it takes our cast metal friends a little longer to wake from their stupor.” Kol answered, clearly sensing her train of thought. “But don’t worry, they’ve never bitten me so far.”</p>
<p>“How comforting,” Caroline said, looking through her purse to grab her wolfsbane perfume bottle. “Good to know they don’t have a taste for painted flesh.”</p>
<p>“No, I mean the other me, the real me. Did you think that I would be able to cast a spell as a painting?”</p>
<p>“I didn’t think you’d cast it at all.” Caroline told him, keeping an ear out for the sound of metal on tile flooring. “You’re a vampire, you can’t cast spells, also aren’t you dead?”</p>
<p>“Oh. Actually this painting of me was done when I was resurrected in human form.”</p>
<p>Caroline shook her head, in the supernatural world it was so easy to get focused on just one potentially world ending tree and miss out on the whole forest of resurrected one night stand’s brothers. Or something like that. </p>
<p>“Are you still resurrected?” She asked politely, it was always good to keep track of the number of Mikaelsons roaming around. </p>
<p>“Well, this version of me died, though actually I was in a different body but Nik thought that Davina and I might like it better to paint me in my usual form.”</p>
<p>Caroline nodded, it made sense to her as long as she didn’t think about it. “But the other version of you is back then?”</p>
<p>“Exactly.” Kol told her.</p>
<p>“But he can’t cast spells either.”</p>
<p>“No, I suppose not. It was Davina who cast the spell.” Kol frowned. “But the point was that the vampire version of me, who is alive again again, has visited previously when the spell was cast and every so often afterwards, and the wolves have never gotten nippy.”</p>
<p>“Ah, thank you.” Caroline replied, filing everything he said under to be reviewed later in her mind. “So . . . “</p>
<p>“So . . .” Kol echoed confused.</p>
<p>“Why are there three wolves! You interrupted my investigation of the sculpture and said all I had to do was ask!”</p>
<p>“Oh, that.” Kol smirked. “I guess I can let you in on a little family secret, that is Klaus with his daughter and her mother.”</p>
<p>“WHAT?” Caroline full on bellowed. “Klaus with his WHAT? Klaus was a vampire, he was dead, no swimmers, no babies.”</p>
<p>“Says the headmistress of a school for supernatural children who happened to give birth to twins from her undead uterus.”</p>
<p>“Kol.” Davina admonished, smiling gently at her husband. “Be nice. You remember what it was like when the other you found out about it.”</p>
<p>“Hilarious.” Kol replied. “It was the funniest thing I’ve ever seen, you think pranking siblings is great and then you get the chance to mess with your living self’s head and there is just nothing better than that.”</p>
<p>Caroline heard the sound of metallic feet approaching, tinking along as they sped towards her, the bronze statues began to circle her and one of them, the largest, came to rest its head against her thigh. </p>
<p>“Flirting even as an animated wolf statue, impressive brother.” Kol joked. </p>
<p>Caroline felt her hand naturally go down to pet his head, and pulled back when it was cold and hard. She could feel the grooves where the hairs had been shaped in the artwork, but it felt wrong and not like a wolf should. The wolf looked saddened by her reaction and retreated back over to the pup who rubbed their noses together in comfort.</p>
<p>“Are they always wolves?” Caroline asked, thinking about the oculus window over the sculpture. </p>
<p>“No! You figured that out quite quickly.” Kol praised. “Our fine friends actually turn into humans on full moons, much like the way the crescent moon pack was cursed for years.” </p>
<p>Caroline vaguely remembered hearing something about that from Rebekah. “So if I came back on a full moon, could I talk to him?”</p>
<p>“As much as I don’t want to help you,” A woman’s voice came from across the gallery. “I don’t want you coming back here any more than necessary. The wolf statues aren’t the only pieces with Klaus in them. All of the artwork in this museum comes alive at night, well except for some of the weirder experimental stuff but that might be alive and we can’t tell, there’s at least one self portrait of Nik in storage downstairs. Go talk to him about how much you miss him.”</p>
<p>Caroline turned to see an older Rebekah, clearly already a vampire, surrounded by party goers in New Orleans. She thought about what Rebekah had said, and what Davina had mentioned before about Kol coming up with the idea for this place. </p>
<p>“Did you cast this spell so you could visit Henrik?” Caroline turned back to Kol and Davina.</p>
<p>Kol frowned, not appreciating how quickly she had caught on. “Not just Henrik, I asked Davina to cast the spell after Klaus and Elijah sacrificed themselves for Klaus’ daughter, Hope. I missed my brothers, even Finn, he’s in the next room so I only have to look at him when I want to. I know that all things die, even Originals, but I wanted a place for my family. I knew I couldn’t take a page out of my mother’s book, twisting nature has nasty consequences, and Henrik was long dead, but I could bring back our memories and animate the works that Nik made.”</p>
<p>“It’s beautiful.” Davina continued, putting her hand on Kol’s arm to comfort him. “I don’t plan to turn, but this way I will be with you all always.”</p>
<p>“You can visit other artwork?” Caroline asked.</p>
<p>“Yeah, there’s some nice fields we meet in most of the time. But it depends what is on display. The other me compelled the curator never to remove the portraits from view, but everything else gets rotated a few times a year.”</p>
<p>“Except, Klaus is in storage.” Caroline pointed out.</p>
<p>“No, he’s in the wolves, and in every brush stroke, and . . . also in storage but only because the self portraits were works on paper and shouldn’t be on view for more than a few months at a time. The art handlers swapped them out last week, you just missed him.”</p>
<p>“But you can go into the storage room downstairs and see him.” Rebekah insisted. “You don’t have to wait for a full moon or until he comes back on display.”</p>
<p>“Right. You can see him now. We can’t because his portrait is impossible to get in or out of. We need doors or open fields or something to travel through, he doesn’t even have a background. I must warn you though, he is a bit <i>sketchy</i> in his current state.”</p>
<p>Davina shook her head and Rebekah insulted Kol’s intelligence and wit as Caroline considered her next steps. Was she ready to see Klaus? In her other trips she hadn’t seen him, not even the image of him. Klaus didn’t like to be the subject of his own work. Now she would not only see him, but he would see her. How life-like would he be? Kol and Rebekah had seemed largely themselves, but these were recent works, they knew her. Would Klaus know her if the drawing was more than twenty years old?</p>
<p>“I’m going to talk to Henrik first.” Caroline announced, decided. “I’ve wanted to meet him for a long time. Then you can tell me more about Hope.”</p>
<p>“Chicken.” Rebekah called from behind her and Kol shook his head. </p>
<p>Caroline moved swiftly back to the first room she’d entered a few hours earlier and stopped in front of the portrait of the young boy who still leaned out onto the frame.</p>
<p>“Hello, I’m Caroline.” She offered smiling at the boy.</p>
<p>“Hi, I’m Henrik. Are you a vampire?”</p>
<p>“Of course she is, Hen. Kol wouldn’t let just anyone come in here.” The younger Rebekah spoke up from the next frame over. “Do I know you? I mean the older me. Are we friends?”</p>
<p>Caroline’s fears were confirmed. If she met Klaus, he might not recognize her. She wondered why it felt so painful, knowing that the memories of her once almost romantic partner wouldn’t know her. He had been alive so long, it was hard to think that as pivotal as he had been in her life, she had only influenced a small portion of his. “Yes, you know me, Rebekah.” Caroline said, pulling herself together, plenty of time to overanalyze these feelings for the next century. “We are sometimes friends.”</p>
<p>“Are we friends?” Henrik asked innocently.</p>
<p>Caroline froze. Had Kol, Rebekah, and Davina not told this version of Henrik what happened to him?</p>
<p>“Don’t be mean, Henrik.” intoned a voice that Caroline recognized from a corner of the room she hadn’t reached on her first time viewing the gallery, Elijah. “That is not the kind of joke Ms. Forbes would be able to appreciate.”</p>
<p>“Thank you, Elijah.” Caroline turned back to Henrik. “Well aren’t you a little prankster, I see now where Kol gets it from.”</p>
<p>“He’s older than me, I get it from him!” Henrik told her. “And it is too funny, Elijah. If I have to be dead at least I get to tell jokes.”</p>
<p>“We can be friends.” Caroline offered. “You could be my favorite Mikaelson.” Young Rebekah frowned, not happy to lose her new friend to her younger brother. “My favorite <i>male</i> Mikaelson I mean.” Rebekah brightened again.</p>
<p>“Well at least you have good taste.” Rebekah told her. “I would worry for you if Niklaus was your favorite. I heard you talking to Kol and Davina about him. Do you looove him?”</p>
<p>“Rebekah, it is rude to eavesdrop! You should not be spying from other people’s frames, you know better.” Elijah admonished. Caroline turned back to him, trying to find an angle where she could talk to all three at once, but it was useless, she was surrounded by Mikaelson’s on all sides.</p>
<p>“He was also a friend of mine.” Caroline said carefully. “I wasn’t quite ready to love him.”</p>
<p>“That’s so tragic.” Rebekah breathed sadly, caught up in a romantic fantasy playing out in her head between her older brother and this woman. “He should be your favorite Mikaelson.”</p>
<p>“She already said it was me, Bekah.” Henrik told her. </p>
<p>“I did.” Caroline agreed. “And honestly Klaus was enough trouble there for a while, it would be hard for him to be my favorite, even if I did love him, with someone like you in the picture.”</p>
<p>Elijah let out a slight chuckle at her word play. </p>
<p>“Henrik, do you get many visitors?” Caroline asked. “Actual visitors, not artwork visitors.” She clarified.</p>
<p>“Kol and Davina come to see me sometimes, Freya came to help with the spell and promised she’d come back with her wife and son someday. Rebekah is supposed to come but she says she isn’t ready.”</p>
<p>“I understand that.” Caroline admitted. “But now you can have me too, I’ll come back sometime.”</p>
<p>“You better.” Henrik insisted. “There are too many of these Mikaelsons around, I need to meet other people.”</p>
<p>“Maybe I can get a loan sent from another museum with more portraits.” Caroline offered. “Probably not Mona Lisa, but I’m sure I can get you some friends, maybe even a mermaid!”</p>
<p>“You should go see him now.” Elijah interrupted Caroline before she could start looking up artwork to bring to her new friend. “We only get a few hours each night and I think you two need some time. I heard you talking to the guard earlier, you said that you were only here for the night.”</p>
<p>“That was before I found out that Klaus has a secret daughter and that I can visit the hall of Mikaelsons anytime I want.” Caroline told him, but recognized he was trying to be helpful. “I’m worried that he won’t know me.” she admitted.</p>
<p>“Ah.” Elijah pondered. “I hadn’t considered that, and I doubt Rebekah or Kol thought of it either, we all have known each other so long the only thing a painting might miss is a few massacres or a good ball. I think at least one of the portraits will recognize you, Klaus did several in a series over the years.”</p>
<p>“Thank you.” Caroline said, meaning it. She still wasn’t ready to face the man who had promised to be her last love, but yesterday she’d never thought she would have that chance again so today she had to take it. </p>
<p>“The passcode, it’s 12345.” The older Rebekah told her, sliding into Elijah’s portrait through a door in the back of the study. </p>
<p>“That’s the kinda thing an idiot would have on his luggage!” Kol shouted from a few rooms over.</p>
<p>“I see that Davina has been showing Kol a lot of high cinema.” Caroline noted to Elijah who looked slightly pained. </p>
<p>“Thankfully he hasn’t seen Jurassic Park yet or I imagine I would be forced to share my quiet gallery with several Tyrannosaurs.” Elijah remarked drily.</p>
<p>Caroline gave him a smile as Kol started shouting that they really needed to get a television installed on the wall opposite his and Davina’s portrait. “Thank you, Rebekah. I’ll go see him now and get out of your hair.”</p>
<p>“Finally.” Rebekah sniffed, “Though I suppose you aren’t the worst company we’ve been forced to endure. If you do come back some other time, it doesn’t have to be to see my brother.”</p>
<p>Caroline inclined her head and found the security door that Rebekah had indicated before and entered the passcode to descend to gallery storage. She could hear the sounds of hundreds of paintings talking back and forth at a low volume before she opened the interior door and was amazed to see them all hung on racks arranged side by side, inches apart. It would take ages for her to find Klaus in all of this. </p>
<p>“Caroline!” Klaus’ voice sounded from somewhere near the front. “Love, is that you?”</p>
<p>“Love? Who is this?” Another Klaus shouted from further back. “Did I get soft?”</p>
<p>“We call everyone ‘love’” another Klaus replied. “Go soft? You’re a fool, Byzantine.”</p>
<p>“Can you find me, Caroline?” The first Klaus called. “I’m on the third rack, move them carefully if you would, Kol is very particular about his collection. Last time I messed something up he had them change my label to anonymous artist for a month.”</p>
<p>Caroline moved carefully towards the racks and gently slid the first one away from the second to the wall, then the second to join it, revealing a small framed drawing of Klaus, or rather of his head and shoulders. It was a good likeness, though she felt there was something missing in his eyes. </p>
<p>“Klaus.” Caroline whispered, kneeling down to be on level with his face. “I can’t believe it.”</p>
<p>“Caroline. I never thought you would come.”</p>
<p>“Well no one told me this place existed.” Caroline replied defensively. </p>
<p>“I would have told you if I were alive when it was created.” Klaus promised. “How did you find it?”</p>
<p>“Rebekah gave me a list of museums that had your work in it.”</p>
<p>“For you to bring Hope to.” Klaus said, knowledgably. </p>
<p>“What? No. I’ve never met your secret daughter, Klaus. You know that. What I want to know is why you never told me about her.”</p>
<p>Klaus sighed. “I did tell you about her, she went to your school.”</p>
<p>“I’m not that bad a headmistress.” Caroline told him. “I think I’d remember having a Hope Mikaelson at my school.”</p>
<p>“You would think that.” He agreed. “But Hope did something, or something happened to her. She disappeared and no one remembers her.”</p>
<p>“You clearly do.”</p>
<p>“I’m literally a memory. All of the inhabitants of this museum are memories pulled back into this world to occupy the artwork. The spell is tied to Kol. As long as he lives, the memories stay, even if they aren’t his. While all of the other information about Hope is gone, her statue remained, her images remained. When a full moon came and Kol visited the museum, she ran up to greet him yelling ‘Uncle Kol, you came back’ and he had no idea who she was.”</p>
<p>“But you all knew.” Caroline realized.</p>
<p>“Yes. All of the artwork recognized Hope, we’d never lost her. We pieced it together, or what we could. Kol called Rebekah and asked if she was missing anything, if she had photos of someone she didn’t know. Apparently Rebekah had noticed a few weeks earlier and was trying to figure it out on her own. Freya pinpointed when it happened, even though we still don’t know what exactly happened, it created a big enough magical shockwave for her to register.”</p>
<p>“How long ago was it?”</p>
<p>“About three months.” </p>
<p>“After Rebekah sent me the list.” Caroline was beginning to believe him. It did explain why Rebekah sent the list in the first place, and she thought the wolf pup upstairs had been sad at her reaction to their approach as well.</p>
<p>“Yes, she asked Kol if it was okay, he told her that I might enjoy some company.”</p>
<p>Caroline pulled a chair from a desk nearby and sat in it. “How are we getting her back?”</p>
<p>“We?” Klaus teased. “I cannot do anything, and I don’t think you need to get involved.”</p>
<p>“I can march right back upstairs and ask your siblings what their plan is.” Caroline offered. “Because apparently Hope is my student, and what’s more she is your daughter and I want to help. Kol said you sacrificed yourself for her. I can’t even remember how you died, why you died. If she is the reason then we need to get her back.”</p>
<p>“Thank you, Caroline.” Klaus said, his face smiling gently. “For coming to see me and offering to help my daughter. Even when I am only a memory, you are the brightest light I see.”</p>
<p>Caroline blushed. “I hear bright light is bad for works on paper, maybe I should stay away until you get your rest.”</p>
<p>“Never. I’d rather fade in your beauty than live another hundred years without you.”</p>
<p>Caroline looked at him and thought of something. “Any artwork that is in this museum comes to life, right?”</p>
<p>“Yes.” Klaus replied. “Once it enters the museum it enters the range of the spell.”</p>
<p>“Perhaps I could donate a work done by one of my favorite artists, then.” Caroline began to smile. “You could use the company, as long as you don’t mind me bringing a horse.”</p>
<p>Klaus’ eyes brightened as he realized what Caroline was offering.</p>
<p>“You still have my drawing?” </p>
<p>“It’s at home, in my desk. I’d much rather it be here with you. I’m heading back to Mystic Falls tomorrow, I think, I’ll take care of it then. But I should warn you, that Caroline, she’s only just met you.”</p>
<p>“It didn’t take you long to fall for me, did it love? I’m sure given time I can convince you again.”</p>
<p>Caroline laughed. “Well, that’s between the two of you. I just want to give you both another chance.”</p>
<p>“Do you have a drawing for each of us, love?” Came the voice of one of the other Klaus’ from the further back in the racks.</p>
<p>“I’m afraid not, you’ll have to share my attentions, or compete for them.” Caroline teased. </p>
<p>“I’m going to make Kol put the other me’s in off-site storage if they try anything.” Klaus growled in front of her.</p>
<p>“You’ll always be my last love.” Caroline promised him softly and looked back once more before heading up the stairs to go scheme with Kol and Davina about bringing Hope back. Caroline knew that she would be finding reasons to come back here again, she wasn’t ready to let go of Klaus yet.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>I think I will write a second chapter at some point, where Caroline helps to bring Hope back and maybe more. I don't have the full idea yet.</p></blockquote></div></div>
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